Uploaded January 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Psappha Ensemble:
Katy Jones - trombone
Benedict Holland & Sophie Rosa - violins
Heather Wallington - viola
Jennifer Langridge -cello
James Manson - double bass
Mark Heron - conductor
This performance was recorded live at Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) on 13th May 2021. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser. The performance took place during the Covid-19 pandemic and was live-streamed without an audience.
Learn more about Psappha: psappha.com
Film Production
Cameras - Soup Collective
Audio & Mastering - Rob Kelledy
Film produced and edited by Tim Williams
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"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world." Samuel Beckett
Federico Fellini’s TV film I Clowns (1970) ends with two keening trumpets. It follows a mock funeral set in a circus ring performed by a troupe of largely veteran clowns that becomes ever more anarchic. The sequence commences with the line ‘Fischietto è morto’ (Fischietto is dead) and is simultaneously a potpourri of traditional circus acts and an allegory on the death of a tradition.
Fischietto è Morto begins at the end of the film with an unaccompanied trombone solo after which the Fellini connection becomes metaphorical and philosophical rather than descriptive. There follows a series of variation-like interconnected sections that alternate slow and fast music:
• Valse Triste
• Agitato
• Tranquillo
• Allegro
• Corteo Funebre (Funeral Cortege)
• Allegro giocoso
• Coda
Traditional clowning is an ambivalent art form. Ostensibly comedic in intent but functional in that it covers circus scene changes, it has an extraordinarily violent, uncomfortable and often vicious vocabulary that might - if I Clowns is anything to go by - involve things like dwarf clowns roasted on a spit, drunk clowns wielding knives, other clowns hit with hammers or having their heads split open with over-sized axes, always accompanied by pratfalls and exaggerated laughter directed at a knowing audience. The revulsion is kept at a distance by the clowns’ make-up which itself conforms to stereotypical designs that have evolved since the days of commedia dell'arte into a formal convention that masks the person whilst delineating the clown and giving the viewer permission to laugh. The perception of clowns as tragic (I Pagliacci), scary (Stephen King’s It), cynical (Krusty in The Simpsons), manipulative (Ronald MacDonald), self-serving (Boris Johnson), melancholic (Send In The Clowns) but seldom actually funny is an inevitable consequence of the tradition.
My approach to this is two-fold; ambivalent if you like!
1. The neutrality of the make-up/mask convention is represented by occasional flat, raw statements of complete twelve-tone rows in their various forms (original, inversion, etc.) as background figuration most readily identifiable in the violins’ pizzicato exchanges towards the end of the ‘tranquillo’ section.
2. The traditional role of the trombone as joker/clown is absorbed by the occasional intervention of aural slapstick interwoven with the odd moment of maudlin self-pity mitigated (I hope!) by a pervasive lyricism and showman-like virtuosity. A quote from a Scarlatti sonata just before the Corteo Funebre signals the one direct emotional link with loss – and that is offset by the trombone’s self-mockery: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world."
© Gary Carpenter
Learn more about Gary Carpenter: garycarpenter.net
Psappha Ensemble:
Katy Jones - trombone
Benedict Holland & Sophie Rosa - violins
Heather Wallington - viola
Jennifer Langridge -cello
James Manson - double bass
Mark Heron - conductor
This performance was recorded live at Hallé St Peter's in Manchester (UK) on 13th May 2021. To view the 4K version we recommend you use Google Chrome or the Firefox browser. The performance took place during the Covid-19 pandemic and was live-streamed without an audience.
Learn more about Psappha: psappha.com
Film Production
Cameras - Soup Collective
Audio & Mastering - Rob Kelledy
Film produced and edited by Tim Williams
--------
"Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world." Samuel Beckett
Federico Fellini’s TV film I Clowns (1970) ends with two keening trumpets. It follows a mock funeral set in a circus ring performed by a troupe of largely veteran clowns that becomes ever more anarchic. The sequence commences with the line ‘Fischietto è morto’ (Fischietto is dead) and is simultaneously a potpourri of traditional circus acts and an allegory on the death of a tradition.
Fischietto è Morto begins at the end of the film with an unaccompanied trombone solo after which the Fellini connection becomes metaphorical and philosophical rather than descriptive. There follows a series of variation-like interconnected sections that alternate slow and fast music:
• Valse Triste
• Agitato
• Tranquillo
• Allegro
• Corteo Funebre (Funeral Cortege)
• Allegro giocoso
• Coda
Traditional clowning is an ambivalent art form. Ostensibly comedic in intent but functional in that it covers circus scene changes, it has an extraordinarily violent, uncomfortable and often vicious vocabulary that might - if I Clowns is anything to go by - involve things like dwarf clowns roasted on a spit, drunk clowns wielding knives, other clowns hit with hammers or having their heads split open with over-sized axes, always accompanied by pratfalls and exaggerated laughter directed at a knowing audience. The revulsion is kept at a distance by the clowns’ make-up which itself conforms to stereotypical designs that have evolved since the days of commedia dell'arte into a formal convention that masks the person whilst delineating the clown and giving the viewer permission to laugh. The perception of clowns as tragic (I Pagliacci), scary (Stephen King’s It), cynical (Krusty in The Simpsons), manipulative (Ronald MacDonald), self-serving (Boris Johnson), melancholic (Send In The Clowns) but seldom actually funny is an inevitable consequence of the tradition.
My approach to this is two-fold; ambivalent if you like!
1. The neutrality of the make-up/mask convention is represented by occasional flat, raw statements of complete twelve-tone rows in their various forms (original, inversion, etc.) as background figuration most readily identifiable in the violins’ pizzicato exchanges towards the end of the ‘tranquillo’ section.
2. The traditional role of the trombone as joker/clown is absorbed by the occasional intervention of aural slapstick interwoven with the odd moment of maudlin self-pity mitigated (I hope!) by a pervasive lyricism and showman-like virtuosity. A quote from a Scarlatti sonata just before the Corteo Funebre signals the one direct emotional link with loss – and that is offset by the trombone’s self-mockery: "Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world."
© Gary Carpenter
Learn more about Gary Carpenter: garycarpenter.net
